Ludacris drank water straight from an Alaska glacier. Fans wondered: Would it make him sick?

The rapper and actor Ludacris made headlines in Alaska this summer for being added to the concert lineup at the Alaska State Fair. Now he’s making them again, for taking a sip of water.

It wasn’t just any water — it was fresh, cold meltwater from Knik Glacier. Chris “Ludacris” Bridges made a stop at the Southcentral Alaska glacier while in the area for his pair of performances over the weekend at the state fair in Palmer.

In a video posted to his social media accounts Monday, the Grammy Award-winning rapper explained that he’d never tasted “fresh glacial water” before. With water bottle in hand and ice cleats secured to his shoes as he walked on the glacier, Ludacris knelt before a pool of crisp, blue water, scooped some up and took a sip.

“Oh my God!” he exclaimed just before the video ends.

It wasn’t long before the reactions from fans started pouring in, with many expressing concern that the artist had endangered his health by drinking unfiltered water from the still pool. His video had been viewed more than 9 million times on TikTok by Tuesday evening, and on Instagram it had more than 1.5 million likes and more than 17,000 comments.

Commenters across platforms admonished and warned the rapper, claiming the water wasn’t clean and suggesting it could have bacteria or parasites in it.

“Ludacris about to become the poster boy for Giardia treatment,” one commenter wrote in response to the video on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“How long ago did he shoot this and have we been monitoring him?” wrote another.

The response was so strong that Ludacris posted a follow-up video on Tuesday acknowledging his fans’ concerns. He called it the “best tasting water” he’d had in his life.

“As I drank it I felt like every cell in my human body was being hydrated and rejuvenated at the same damn time,” Ludacris said in the video.

Ludacris is far from the first person to take a sip of fresh water from an Alaska glacier, and he will surely not be the last.

Will drinking unfiltered water from a glacier make you sick?

The short answer is no.

The longer answer is also no.

Drinking water that’s melted from a glacier does not generally pose a health risk, said Martin Truffer, a professor of physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who has expertise in glaciology.

“If it was all that dangerous, at some point in the last 40 years of doing this I would have gotten sick,” he said.

Truffer described water from glaciers, especially meltwater from a glacier’s surface, as extremely clean. He likened it, in a way, to drinking rainwater — it’s water that has fallen from the sky, frozen into ice and then melted again.

And because the water is frozen in glacial ice before melting, bacterial activity is extremely low, Truffer said.

Giardia is a concern with natural water sources in Alaska, Truffer said, but it mainly comes into play where animals or wildlife are involved. If the water source was downstream of areas with biological activity, Truffer said, then he might be concerned.

“But when you’re up on the ice, I don’t think you have any reason to be concerned,” he said.

The other situation in which glacial water might not be trusted is if it were close to a human camp, Truffer said.

Fun fact: Much of Anchorage’s drinking water is glacial water, though it’s not collected straight from the glacier’s surface. According to the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility, Eklutna Lake and Ship Creek generate close to 90% of the city’s public water supply “from snowmelt and glacier runoff.” That water is treated to remove “naturally occurring particles suspended in the water from soil or bedrock from the grinding action of Eklutna Glacier,” the utility says on its website.

“The protected wilderness of (Chugach State Park) ensures that source waters are virtually free of contamination,” the utility says.

A common bucket-list item

Ludacris was taken on a tour of the Knik Glacier by Alaska Helicopter Tours. The company offers sightseeing tours and landings on the glacier, as well as paddleboarding tours and ice skating, said general manager Mike Neely.

As part of talking with clients and teaching them about the glacier, Neely said, guides talk about glacial water and its pristine, untouched nature. If guests want to bring a water bottle, Neely said, they’re free to fill it up.

“It’s kind of funny how much it’s blown up, to be honest,” Neely said of Ludacris’ video. “It’s kind of always been a byproduct of our tours.”

The company’s pilots drink water from the glacier and so does Neely himself. He said Alaska Helicopter Tours flies thousands of people every year and no one has ever gotten sick that he knows of.

Neely said the pilots are trained to bring visitors to areas of the glacier free of animals and with more flowing pools of water. In the past, he’s also consulted a glaciologist, who found no issue with allowing guests to drink the water.

“I drink it every time I go out there, and as far as I can tell it’s OK,” Neely said.

As for Ludacris, the rapper assured his fans in his follow-up video that he’s doing just fine.

“Listen man, I’m here,” he said. “I feel like Superman.”